


Joust and Riposte

by OxfordOctopus



Series: OxfordOctopus' Snips'n'Snaps [5]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alt Power, Anger Management, Annette Hebert Lives, Bad Parenting, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Danny Hebert Dies, F/F, Gen, Jouster!Taylor, Or a lack thereof, Racism, Robbery, Secret Identity, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Self-Worth Issues, Suicidal Thoughts, full gambit of issues from Annette pushing Taylor too hard
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-23 04:55:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: ( AU - Jouster!Taylor )A hundred things went through her head in that moment, from rage to memories of Sophia’s idle disinterest while she showed off the thing she had stolen from Taylor this time. Nobody would listen to her when she told them, when the few cherished pieces of dad she still had left found their way to Sophia, bandied about as a trophy. There were also thoughts about how it might be tracked back to her, how any bit of evidence she left them brought the PRT one step closer to her, to someone they'd need to shut up to continue enabling their precious little Ward.(Taylor has anger issues and the ability to disintegrate things she hits isn't helping.)





	1. Bayonet

Taylor hadn’t ever been particularly sensitive to loud noises. She had grown numb to them, especially with her time at Winslow, but even before that they’d never been able to startle or set her off.

Still, it didn’t mean they _couldn’t_ get to her.

The klaxon of Justinian’s Finery - an ugly brick building that she’d blown the windows out of, a place that Tattletale said she was pretty sure was a front for the E88’s activity in downtown Brockton - had left a vivid, pounding impression in the back of her skull. It was a thing of high, pitchless squeals, shifting between tones with every new bleat, never letting her get accustomed to the sound of it.

The only thing that was stopping her from trying to bring the entire _fucking_ building down was that she was, in this very moment, robbing the place blind. A lot of their wares were fake, Tattletale had explained during the before-mission briefing, but the jewelry that wasn’t could be sorted out and passed to a middleman. The ones that did turn out to be fake would be added to whatever scroogian pile Regent had said he was going to make.

The base didn’t have a pool, Regent had said with the same sort of surety he used when talking about Dark Souls or the best way to fence stimulants to middle schoolers, so he’d have to settle for a pile of gold - fake or not - that he could _at least_ sleep on.

Taylor personally didn’t see the appeal, but then again – she wasn’t Regent.

There was something viscerally pleasing about dumping armfuls of gold bands, necklaces and rings into the duffel bag she’d been given on the ride over, watching as it collected into a loose collection of shiny things in a way that made the lizard part of her brain preen uselessly. It was no wonder people depicted dragons obsessing over hoards of otherwise pointless valuables - because, really, what’s an airplane-sized lizard going to do with minted coins - if this was how she reacted to just seeing a small pile of gold and gold-colored metal.

“We’ve got a minute. Everyone start packing it away.” Grue’s voice boomed in her ear, briefly smothering the klaxon beneath the hazy crackle of her earpiece. There was still some more she could be scraping into her bags - an entire tray of ornate earrings caught her eye - but, while she didn’t really get along with Grue, she couldn’t much bring herself to deny him. Getting caught with their pants down here would probably lead to a protracted fight between not just the PRT and BBPD, but also probably some white nationalists, maybe even one of their capes; which was - as you’d expect - less than ideal.

To nobody’s surprise, least of all hers, the bag was heavier than she was. Gold weighed a whole fucking lot she had come to learn, and even if some of it was fake they were good enough fakes that it was probably just as heavy. For not the first time, Taylor found herself cursing the limber runner’s body she had been born with instead of something with a lower center of gravity and more of an ability to generate muscle mass.

Bitch didn’t help her frustrations any, either. She had stalked back into the jewelry store, taken one look at Taylor - not the fun type of look, either - and had all but yanked the bag out of her hands and walked away without looking any less winded for it. She really did tend to live up to her name, unfortunately, and they hadn’t started out on the greatest foot, especially not after her team introduction had ended with two concussions and one very broken coffee table for her troubles.

“Grue?” She had to shout over the alarm for her earpiece to pick it up. “Mind if I go out front and watch? I can circle back when we leave.”

There was a short, pregnant pause. She knew what he was thinking about, she just really wasn’t a fan of it.

“Try not to get yourself caught.” Grue’s response was, if nothing else, about the closest thing she had gotten to acceptance with her stony, helmeted leader.

The stuffy August night, once an annoyance, felt so, _so_ very nice after being stuck in the midst of alarms and a cranky villain team leader. Doubly so, as with Grue’s darkness shrouding the few openings that the keening alarm could get through, it was almost completely silent again, or at least silent enough that nobody who didn’t walk by the building - at which point they’d obviously see the floating mass of void that was Grue’s power - would know any better. She could appreciate that, especially the silence bit, that was _very_ appreciated.

The pain in her skull started to recede, and with it the haze that pain so often brought. She found herself taking greedy gasps of air when she hadn’t been in need of them of them to begin with. Even more, now that she could _fucking_ stop and think without her ears bleeding, she noticed the way the sweat clung to her skin – the way it rubbed poorly against the stained leather of her chest piece and how it made her hair feel more like a swamp, less like a budget rebellion’s attempt at an undercut. Still, as the haze of heat and pain slowly drained, she _finally_ could take a moment to just calm down.

Then, of course, she was shot at. Not the conventional type of ‘shot at’, mind, Taylor could deal decently well with scampering behind cover while someone emptied a clip into a wall near her head. She had managed it before. She hadn’t liked it, but she had managed it. No, it was that distinctive fucking twang of a crossbow and the impact of a bolt head as she jerked to the side, watching as a gunmetal black arrow skipped across the pavement, having been aimed for the dead center of her throat.

She wasn’t even sure if the thing was one of Sophia’s lethal ones, but seeing as she’d stopped aiming at her center mass nearly a month ago it probably didn’t matter.

“Grue? Shadow Stalker’s here.” Tattletale’s voice cut in, apparently also deciding today that she’d live up to her namesake.

“ _Seriously._ ” Haha, wow, that was _not_ the sort of anger she was used to hearing out of Grue. She had to stop herself from wincing at it. “Fucking – fine. Fuck it. Bayonet, _keep her off of us_. Don’t do anything fucking stupid.”

Sophia - Shadow Stalker, she knew - materialized in a burst of shadow, pulling herself free from the inky black of the store’s leftmost alley. Her crossbow was raised, tipped with what Taylor now _knew_ was the non-lethal bolt - as it was too damn close to her at this point - but aimed in a place that might certainly kill her - her throat - considering that she was barely five feet of distance away.

The secondary portion of her power, the part that made her _move_ , the part tied to the little kernel of panic that writhed and bucked every time she was reminded of _who exactly Sophia really was_ , shoved her forward, carrying her in one stride right up to Sophia’s side in less than a breath. A pivot and a wide swing led her pike’s shaft _through_ Sophia, bisecting a cloud of shadow that just as quickly rematerialized. She jerked her head - and more importantly her neck - to the side and felt as the Ward’s bolt cut through her flared collar, blessedly avoiding her nape or throat and instead shattering itself against the concrete behind her.

Sophia retreated, erupting back into that mix of dark blue and dark purple sand, reconstituting just out of her fifteen-ish foot range. Shame that she’d picked up on that; Taylor was considering getting something extendable just to fuck with her.

“Really, Shadow Stalker? The throat?” Excitement, the first signs of her _enjoyment_ , came to her. The anger felt better now, less _raw_ , and the fear was rapidly receding now that Sophia didn’t have a bolt leveled square at her jugular. “I thought you were going non-lethal?”

“ _Shut. Up._ ” Sophia’s response was, if nothing else, expected.

A smile flickered onto her face, still hidden beneath her torn collar. Taylor knew her expression was probably nothing pleasant.

She didn’t care.

Sophia jerked forward, dissolving again – though this time apparently going up instead of forwards. If she was a betting woman - and she almost certainly _was_ \- the surface gripping tinkertech she’d seen appearing on Sophia’s boots and gloves might be part of the reason why. Looking up videos on your bullies was, normally, something most people wouldn’t recommend but, y’know, if you only met them once a month and had the intended goal of caving their skull in some day? _Well_ , it wouldn’t hurt to watch them fumble and nearly get knocked out by an overzealous Über roleplaying as an Orc.

Still, Taylor couldn’t have any of that.

The concrete gave beneath the next surge of speed, ramming her forward and back into Sophia’s personal space. The shadowy apparition twisted, a flicker of physicality among just so much dust, and she wasn’t about to waste the chance. A simple thrust forward brought her pike into a line, her breath catching as her power surged out of her, into the pike, and then _immediately_ into the wall, unfolding into a wild crack of lightning. Fingers of blinding yellow lashed out, carried out from the small crater she’d broken into the bricks, drawn towards the conductive substance that Sophia became whenever her power was active.

Her scream was painful to hear at such a close range, though listening to the meaty _thump_ as she hit the ground was more than worth it. Taylor had held back, of course, it’d be no good if she _killed_ Sophia, that’d be asking for the Birdcage or a kill order. No, instead she’d applied _just_ enough electricity that it forced her to revert back to a solid state.

Another pivot of her body brought the tip of her pike out of the brickwork, swinging it back behind her as she let the shaft slip, only clenching back down once she took hold of the very bottom. She didn’t hesitate in bringing the entire thing down, putting more than a little excess force into it. While she couldn’t see through the mask, the particularly harsh yelp as the blunted handle of her pike slammed into Sophia’s ribcage probably said more than enough about how she was feeling. Shame that she almost immediately shifted again, speeding along as a swarm of shadow before Taylor could put another jolt or three into her.

Then the other girl was solid again, about a dozen feet away, favoring her left side in such a way that made Taylor’s smile nearly eclipse the rim of her collar. She tamped down on it before the other girl noticed.

“What’s the matter?” She brought her pike up to rest on her shoulder, doing her best impression of Circus, the shitty little quirk of their lips and all, even if Sophia couldn’t see it. “ _Shocked_ that I could put one over you?”

Her words were apparently enough, as Sophia vanished with what amounted to a feral snarl of rage. Of course, she was obviously playing into her anger issues, the more Taylor kept her in that state the more often she could make use of her power to bridge the gap between their combat experience.

It came as a surprise, then, that as she shifted forward with the intent to bring her pike down and into the concrete beneath her, _Sophia was already there_. Reeling as panic surged up and into her throat, she froze up, taking a straight right dead on her cheekbone, a burst of vertigo and motes of light swallowing up her vision. She stumbled, and soon there was an accompanying crack of pain, of metal and heavy plastic breaking skin across the back of her head, followed by a damp wetness she barely registered as everything skewed to one side. Falling forward, she barely kept herself upright, needing to force the tip of her pike into the concrete below.

Then Sophia reformed, in what Taylor only then registered as the second time in a few seconds. She was raising her crossbow, the tip unidentifiable from the way the world sat off-center. She didn’t do anything, just _stood_ there, crossbow leveled between her eyes.

“—ou are so _fucking_ lucky I’m on patrol tonight or I’d fucking _skewer_ you.” The keening in her ears faded enough to hear parts of Sophia’s rant, though she barely paid attention to it. Sophia was screaming and ranting about wanting to beat the shit out of her - no surprise there, really - and Taylor was more preoccupied with the intrusion of Grue _also_ yelling at her - which wasn’t helping - that they had, to quote, ‘get the fuck out of dodge or so fucking help me.’

Then, Sophia reached out to take her pike. A hundred things went through her head in that moment, from rage to memories of Sophia’s idle disinterest while she showed off the thing she had stolen from Taylor _this_ time. Nobody would listen to her when she told them, when the few cherished pieces of dad _she still had left_ found their way to Sophia, bandied about as a trophy. There were also thoughts about how it might be tracked back to her, how any bit of evidence she left them brought the PRT one step closer to her, to someone they'd need to shut up to continue enabling their precious little _Ward_.

The last and perhaps the most unifying thought, was the simple wonder as to why she was arrogant enough to touch her things again. Maybe it was her mother’s influence, but when Taylor shifted her power around as she felt the circuit between her weapon and Sophia open up, she wanted to _burn_ the hand that wanted to steal for her. Her breath gave again, catching in her throat and turning into a wheeze, as the gout of flame she’d drawn on spilled out and into the offending hand. Sophia reeled back with a scream, the bottom half of her tinkertech gauntlet vanishing beneath a pulse of welder’s flame, revealing a rapidly blistering palm.

Then she went incorporeal, and Taylor pulsed her power _out_. She chose lightning and stopped trying to hold back, stopped trying to sandbag and keep things _safe_. The backlash was harsh, the lurch of her belly nearly making her hips give out, as the act of swapping between two effects this quickly so often accompanied a very poignant drain in her energy, but she just _didn’t_ care. A bramble of lightning, unfurling around the base of her pike and _into_ Sophia’s misty form, was what she wanted, and the scream of horrified agony was proof enough that she did.

Sophia hit the ground, stuttering and twitching.

Grue was still yelling in her ear, she knew. His voice was getting louder, angrier, the concern from before bleeding out of his tone into something harder, sharper. She didn’t listen, _couldn’t_ listen, not with the noise in her ears, with the knot of wet agony that caught in her stomach, pulsing with something foreign, unwanted even. Guilt? Fear? A little bit of both? Taylor didn’t know, couldn’t know. She could only watch Sophia’s form grow more and more active, rocked by repeated tremors as her voice spilled out into a hollow, agonized sob, something she’d never expect to hear from the other girl.

Then the gauntlet hit her, and she could, thankfully, stop thinking for a moment.

Who or what had she slammed into? Taylor didn’t know. The world spun in a uniquely broken way, the ground beneath her churning and eddying with little care for her balance. She almost certainly had a concussion, she knew in a moment of lucidity, but the concussion itself was at least doing enough to blunt the hazy edge of pain around the hand that clenched so very tightly to her pike. She didn’t want to look at it, couldn’t bring herself to.

“—need medical evac, Shadow Stalker was hit with a direct current.” Someone’s – no, _Armsmaster’s_ words carried on the wind, reminding her that the voice in her own ear had winked out. It had been either cut off by Grue himself or, more likely, was disconnected as a result of a broken earpiece. She couldn’t move her arms well enough to check, though.

Getting a grasp on where her limbs were and how they normally bent took a moment. She had been lodged, quite literally, into the side of a car. It hurt to breathe, it hurt for her _heart_ to beat, each steady _thump_ followed by a ragged gasp of agony that told her that _something_ was at least broken. The urge to puke came to her again, though it was easier to dismiss in the haze of her concussion, that and she knew puking would do nothing but make everything hurt worse. Armsmaster still busied himself, holding Shadow Stalker’s face away from her line of sight, her mask in one hand as the other girl gasped and retched into the concrete.

Her legs held when she pulled herself up, Armsmaster still too incensed to hear her.

“Bayonet?” Taylor blinked, hearing Tattletale. Her voice was faraway, buried beneath the hiss of broken machinery. Belatedly, she noticed how her left ear felt wet, but she wasn’t about to think too much about that. “Stay right where you are, okay? Bitch is going straight ahead. Just stand there. Don’t move.”

Armsmaster turned abruptly, hand lancing out for his halberd at a sound Taylor didn’t quite hear until it appeared. One of Bitch’s dogs, she recognized absently. The man _howled_ something at them as her team neared, and though the words were lost on her the _feeling_ wasn’t. _Rage_ , more rage than she’d ever heard from the man, whether on television or even during the moments people had captured when he was fighting Endbringers.

Then, agony. Someone had taken hold of her, though who it wasn’t clear. Hands pulled her onto the fleeing dog, the bumps and slam of paws against concrete more than enough of a jostle to send her back under, back to the place where everything hurt _just so much less._


	2. Brigade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor has to deal with the consequences of her actions, even if misconstrued.

It wasn’t the pain that woke Taylor, neither was it the heavy, clotting feeling in her chest, or the sharp _beep_ - _beep_ - _beep_ that pounded into her skull with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

It was Tattletale’s voice, as loaded as she knew that explanation was.

“She’s waking up.” Tattletale’s voice cut through the slight keening in her ears. Taylor grimaced as she wrenched her eyes open, suffering through the prickly feeling that light now hit her with. The room was barren but familiar; Doc’s place, if the lumpy gurney beneath her and the uniform concrete was any indication.

“Good morning, sunshine.” Regent, _blessedly_ assholish Regent. Taylor managed a meagre smile, wincing as she shifted her shoulders and found her torso unyielding. She was tempted to look down, to put her focus where she could smell antiseptic smothering copper, but she didn’t really have it in her. Whatever happened to her she _really_ didn’t want to see it.

Grue, however, was another story. She couldn’t tell with his mask on, but the rigid posture and the way she could all but _hear_ his teeth gritting wasn’t inspiring any sort of confidence. “Do you know how much shit you’re in?” The anger was still there, but it had faded into something close to resignation. That or he was _really_ holding himself back. “How much shit _we’re_ in?”

“No.” It hurt to speak, but she managed. “No, I don’t. Can’t remember.”

Whatever she was _supposed_ to say, that wasn’t it. She could see Grue’s shoulders raise, see his fingers collect around either of his biceps, see him _visibly stop himself from hitting her_. Her throat felt a whole lot more thick, now, and the feeling only worsened when, wordlessly, he stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him. The impact was loud enough to hurt.

“I mean, I get the theatrics.” Regent sounded completely unrepentant. “But at the worst you mutilated someone, and that’s really not as bad as anyone here is making it out to be.”

“It was a _Ward,_ Regent.” Tattletale sounded someplace between disgust, frustration, and maybe worst of all, _disappointment_.

But she couldn't focus on that, not with the abrupt thrust of memories - _the smell of burnt flesh, of Sophia screaming, of Armsmaster hitting her and her wishing that the unconsciousness would last longer, if only because she felt like she deserved it_ \- that quickly overwhelmed her. She only barely made it to the bedpan at her side when the gorge overwhelmed her, the bile run through by veins of copper-red and her chest tight and aching with each retch.

Regent was still talking, she tried to not to listen.

She failed.

“Oh come _on_ Tats, it’s not like she screwed the pooch. From the animosity you’ve told us about, they probably _deserved_ it.” _No, nononono._ She had to clamp down on her mouth again to stop another gag. _Fuck, fuck, fuckfuck Regent, stop talking._

He didn’t.

“I mean, shit. I get there’s some decorum necessary but if she wanted to kill Shadow Stalker, who am I to com—”

Taylor didn’t quite catch the rest of his words, or the rest of Regent’s actions, really. By the time she recognized that she had been heaving into the bedpan again Regent was gone and Tattletale, hand so warm, was holding her hair away from her face while rubbing firm circles in the center of her back.

“We’re going for a meeting after this.” Tattletale sounded worryingly distant. “Doc has you on something – a fluid made by some Tinker from Colorado named Mugroot. It’ll heal you, but it’s painful and uncomfortable, you probably already felt it since it was administered directly into the chest. It did end up costing your cut and a little bit of my own money, but it’s not a big deal, especially considering the alternative was risky surgery.”

She was right. Tattletale was _always_ right, for better or for worse.

“You – you can’t come.” Her voice was quiet then, _strained_. Taylor felt something nasty pool into her throat. “I’ve already started to turn on the IV – you should feel it soon, and by the time you wake up you’ll be mostly healed. You’ll have to lay low, no exercise or overexertion, for a week or so, as your body reinforces itself. You’ll be brittle.”

_Stop talking._

Tattletale continued on, unabated. “I’ll leave some clothes for you, for when you wake up. I covered as best I could with your mother, under these circumstances.” _Stop, stop stop stop._ “But, well. There’ll be a burner phone, with our decision.” _Please._

Whatever was in the drip had already started to take hold. Taylor felt her vision slacken, sliding off and towards the ground whenever she tried to hold it steady. Someone had taken the bedpan out from her grasp and was guiding her head back to the gurney. She couldn’t restrain the sob of pain that came over her.

“I know,” Tattletale’s voice was gentle. “I knew. I know. You need help, Bayonet.”

 _Stop it. Stop doing this. You promised._ Bitter, prickling heat burned at the corners of her eyes. Tattletale’s hand was soft – she smelled like lilac, as odd as that particular thought was beneath all of the raw emotion. “I know I promised not to do this – after I told you about how my power works.” Her voice was gentler, softer. She was even closer now. Taylor barely managed not to cry, choking it back before it could fully surface. “How I work, I guess,” she added, belatedly.

A hand covered her eyes. The lull of sleep was closer, too close. The lilac smell was stronger, the touch of skin, blessedly smooth, smoother than Taylor’s, but still burning with a heat she wanted to chase.

Tattletale was so close. “I’m sorry, Taylor.” Tattle—no, _Lisa’s_ voice was gentle, whisper quiet. Taylor couldn’t contain the painful sob that rolled up from her chest at that. “Please, _please_. Please get help. I can’t – I can’t help you, not like this. I tried, but this life? It isn’t for you. I know that. Please.”

Whatever she babbled as the drugs - heavy, safe, _comforting_ \- took her, she wasn’t sure, but Lisa’s hand never left her face.

\- ※ -

Staring into the mirror, Taylor tried to digest what she saw. Her shirt, one of Bitch’s if the size and wet dog smell was any indication, with her skinny jeans she assumed were lost or ruined but had just turned out to be at the lair – the former lair. Her shoes - some chucks - were new, or at least looked unused, and a size too big, which probably meant they were Lisa’s.

Her eyes were heavy and bagged, a byproduct of healing, and her skin was quite a bit more pale than it normally was. The rest of her wasn’t much better, seeing as she was covered in bloodstains beneath the clothes. It had only been luck that she had been given permission to rinse the blood out of her hair – a short bush of curls surrounded by a fuzzy undercut, probably in need of another shave at the sides.

Flicking her eyes away from the reflective surface, Taylor tried not to grimace at the sight of her front door. It was barely five in the morning and she could already see the lights on. Her mom had always been an early riser, but not _this_ early, and especially not with the lights on. She’d always kept them off until seven, or usually not at all when Summer came around, what with how early the sun rose.

Slipping her key into the lock and twisting, the door clunk’d open with little complaint. The home alarm was still deactivated, which was another bad sign, and maybe worst of all was that she heard a conversation dying off as she entered. _Great, her girlfriend is here. Fuck._

“Taylor.” Mom’s voice, clipped and stiff, rang out from the kitchen. “Come here.”

A thrill of anxiety rode her spine, nausea coming with it. She swallowed both of them back, letting her feet guide her towards the lit kitchen.

As she expected, her mother was nursing a cup of coffee and her girlfriend - Hannah - was idly cleaning dishes, not bothering to glance back at her as she stepped through the threshold. Her mother leveled a flat, probing stare at the flannel shirt, emotions warring across her face. Eventually, she simply motioned towards the opposite end of the table.

“Sit.”

Taylor settled down into the stiff wooden chair, trying to keep her stomach from worming its way into her throat. Hannah, apparently either expecting this or being disinterested enough in the conversation, continued to clean off the dishes and put them away on the drying rack. She wasn’t even humming that Kurdish folk song that she - apparently unknowingly - slipped into whenever doing chores.

She could all but feel her heart drop into her stomach. This was probably going to be bad.

“For starters, you’re grounded until you start school in September.” Mom sounded strained, though confident in her decision. That tended to be her resting voice – upset at her for _something_ while also simultaneously knowing exactly how to bend her arm to feel better about it. _Still, it’s only two and a half weeks, I can cope._

Taylor jogged her head into a stiff nod.

“We _were_ going to have a more thorough discussion about something this morning,” her mom continued, taking a moment to sip at her coffee. “But now you’ll have less input, and I’ll expect no arguing. This would happen, anyway, but I was going to try and help you cope with the change, but I don’t really think you deserve that privilege after tonight.”

_What._

“You see,” her mom’s arm reached out, coaxed around an apparently dish-free Hannah. The Kurdish woman’s expression was placid and gentle, if somewhat nervous. “We’ve decided to move in together, away from here, in particular.”

_**What.** _

“You’ll be transferred to Arcadia after we move in, the faculties there are far more suited to help your education, and we can live in a safer area. It’ll make my commute easier, your future better, _and_ Hannah can live with us.” She spoke as though this all made perfect sense. Taylor had to swallow down her anger, especially with her impulse control already fucked.

“I – I don’t—”

“I _said_ this isn’t up for discussion.” Her mom’s voice cut through, forcing her words back into her throat. Her hands found the edges of the table and _clenched_ , trying very hard not to upset her any further. The last thing she needed was for the move to be expedited because _mother dearest_ was feeling _fucking_ bitter.

Okay, so maybe she was really mad. _Fuck._

She wasn’t really sure how she could cope with, well, _all of this_. The night had been shitty, that was granted, and something of an understatement. The message left on that stupid _fucking_ burner still hurt to think about, the three-to-one vote to remove her with _Regent_ being the one who voted against. The veiled threats Grue had texted her, probably without Lisa’s permission, about if she ever decided to ‘act stupid’. The total lack of communication after the text, how _clinical_ it had been.

Her costume? Ruined. Her clothes? Ruined. Her friends? Gone.

Now this. _Now fucking this_. Now she got to abandon her fucking _childhood home_ to a woman she knew her mom had only dated for eight months. She liked Hannah, and she had learned to come to terms with how different she had been. She balanced out mom, but it wasn’t as though she balanced her out as well as Dad had. She could bring her down from her waspish moments, from her mom’s need to control her, but it was never perfect, _never would be_.

On any other night, Taylor wondered if she’d be better about this. The table still creaked beneath her contained anger. Her mother looked nonplussed, Hannah less so.

Her mom _sighed_. “Did you at least use protection?”

It wasn’t the words used that set her off, not really. It was the tone, the dismissive ‘you’ll get over it’ type of nonchalance. The complete and total lack of care about something she - admittedly - knew nothing about, but it _broke_ her. Her eyes stung, and her shoulders rolled up hard, catching against her neck before she could stop herself. The chair clattered onto the floor beneath her, upturned; her mom simply glanced away.

“Fuck you.” That got her mother’s attention. Taylor found her voice thick in her throat, the words having been more of a mulish impulse than anything else. “Fuck. Just – fuck.”

“Taylor _Anne_ Hebert!” Her mom’s fury, though nowhere near as potent as her father’s, could still be terrifying, but she wasn’t feeling it. Hannah simply pressed a hand into the other woman’s shoulder, stopping her from rising.

Hannah glanced at her, her expression unreadable. “I think you should go to your room.”

It took a moment to get over the indignation of Hannah ordering her around, of demanding she do anything in _her_ fucking home, but in the end she obliged. She didn’t right the chair as she passed, she didn’t avoid the bin either, pitching it over with her thigh, she just kept steady and went _through_ her obstacles.

Her room was quiet when she slammed the door close behind her, the rattle of the frame and subsequent wheeze of pain - _Lisa had told me not to overexert myself and there I fucking go_ \- drowned out by the thunderous bang as it fully closed. She should’ve gone to the bathroom, cleaned herself off before her mom could get too inquisitive, but she couldn’t imagine doing that to herself, not really. Not with the two of them still here.

Her room was dimly lit, segmented by bookshelves filled with study material and the few trophies or awards she'd ever managed to win. She had a laptop - a gift from last year, before _that_ happened - which was placed at the foot of her bed on a breakfast tray, plugged in if only to stop it from losing its charge in ten minutes. Her real phone, the one her mother demanded she keep, sat off to the side, plugged in and blinking a red light – a reminder that she had a message to read.

For good measure, Taylor twisted the knob lock shut.

Then she let the pain come, let it unfurl and prick at her eyes. She sunk down into a squat and smothered her face beneath crossed arms, doing her very, _very_ best to be quiet as she gasped and spat for breath. She didn’t need Hannah or her mother hearing her, not with the way she’d acted.

 _Fuck_.


	3. Bristle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annette makes good on their promise and Taylor moves to their new house. She's less than impressed.

She hated it.

 _Annette_ \- she was _fucking upset_ enough to cut the cordial family shit - had done just about exactly what Taylor had expected her to do: push the moving date way closer. It wasn’t out of character, and fucking expected after she’d calmed down from her little anger cry, but _holy shit_ did it still burn.

Apparently, from what Taylor could gleam between the accusatory glares she and her mother shared, the _idea_ was a move closer to September, maybe at the end of August. They’d already set her up to go to Arcadia under Hannah’s address - which explained why she hadn’t gotten her Winslow schedule and apparently never _would_ \- and would try to soft sell it to her over time, to slowly prod and push her into giving in and making it seem like her own decision. They’d hoped - and it _hurt_ to know they were probably right - that she wouldn’t think much about the abrupt shift to Arcadia - she’d be too glad to be out of Winslow - nor about the fact that the schedule would’ve been mailed to Hannah instead of her own home.

Speaking of which, her childhood home was slated to be demolished and then refurbished into a park. Why? Fuck if she knew. One of the dockworkers might’ve needed it, but Mo— _Annette_ had claimed the deal they’d cut with the government was far and above what they’d make after even ten or fifteen years of renting. Of course, she hadn’t gotten a chance to pipe up that they were taking away _perfectly good real estate_ and making it so that the already fluctuating housing crisis would get considerably worse but hey, she was just the passive aggressive daughter of a hawkish bitch who left a package of condoms and a _fucking teen pregnancy pamphlet_ on her new bed.

Fucking hell.

Maybe the worst about all of this - aside from the condoms and pointed comments at her expense - was that Hannah’s house was really well designed, in a great neighborhood, and barely a twenty-five minute walk from Arcadia. She apparently made enough money to afford a house in a neighborhood dominated by _apartments_. It was in one of those semi-gated communities, being part of the greater whole but divided by the sole road in being locked behind a gate that needed some MAC pass looking piece of shit to open up.

It was only with immense self-control that she hadn’t put her fist through something yet. Still, the future sure was starting to look bright for destruction of personal property! Hopefully this time she wouldn’t get nearly killed for her troubles, but she probably would; after all, _everyfuckingbody abandoned her._

Her room was large, a long rectangle with a sloped floor that rose up to the place where her bed was. The off-white walls were lined with her bookshelves, outfitted primly and properly - without her consent - by things she’d need and trophies she didn’t think she deserved. The floor was all soft carpet until the slope, at which point it became a burgundy hardwood she thought was tacky but knew wouldn’t be changing, her laptop was where it always tended to be - the foot of her bed, on a small wooden platform - and everything else she’d need to survive in the new house was here, but not in spirit.

Nothing was. The house was new, clean, unused like a stubborn boot. The kitchen still had plastic coverings over the hinges, for fuck’s sake, and the living room felt like it belonged in an IKEA showroom. It had all the pomp and flair of an actual living space but felt about as hollow and fake as her mother did.

There wasn’t anything she could do about it, Taylor knew. School was in two weeks, the itch to break something had become less of an impulse and more of a need, and if she didn’t get her fucking head in the right place she’d probably end up hurting someone or breaking something important.

She could probably get her pike from its hiding spot, but it wasn’t like she could do anything with it. She was still grounded, probably until second term - her mother had made it clear that their fight wasn’t over more than once, so she had doubts about her future prospects - and it was unlikely she’d get a pass on her punishment until she was miserable enough that her mother could feel vindicated.

So how had she coped with any of this? Moping, mostly. Moping and studying for a school she was too _fucking_ stupid for anyway. She was never good enough, not really; her mother’s expectations alone were mountainous, let alone an actually decent school. She knew better than anyone that she was stupid, it wasn’t a mystery – Emma and Sophia had even figured it out, for all the cotton between their ears, and living up to expectations that she simply was incapable of reaching had been grating long before Emma drove a knife into her back.

She didn’t get math, she didn’t get computer studies, she didn’t get English, the one thing her mother _expected_ her to. Chemistry was better, so was history, but everything else might have been so much white noise; especially when she saw the expected curriculum for her second year. It’d leave her with no time for things she enjoyed. She’d always be on the back foot, always _disappointing_ people even while constantly studying, always being told to try harder, to just pull a fucking miracle out of her ass.

The urge to punch something wasn’t getting any better, clearly. Taylor buried one hand against her mouth, trying to at least stifle the noise of annoyance that she could feel building in her chest. Warring against the impulse, she let her gaze slide off of the scattered study guides and towards the pair of windows on the wall. They were cracked only a little, in part because her mother had taken the whole ‘fuck you and the place you came from’ to the obvious next level by getting some sort of bar lock installed, one that made it so that opening it any larger than a few inches without first unlocking it would be next to impossible.

Could she jimmy it? The idea came to her slowly as she focused, looking at the construction. It was mostly plastic, durable plastic, sure, but not metal – she doubted they made prison basement window locks in metal without them being considerably larger, but... Wouldn’t these come with fire safety measures? Especially if they were locking off a window?

It only took Taylor a few minutes to find the switch - a small, pin-sized slider that had been placed flush against the window frame - and flick it down. The entire thing lost the tension in its parts, folding back into itself like the spines of a tent, leaving only the screwed-in base but allowing for the window to be pulled down entirely. There was a screen to handle, sure, but that plopped out and was summarily pulled in with a simple tug of her hand, after which she dumped it at the foot of her bed.

A few more minutes of wriggling showed her that she could very easily pull herself through the opening. It took barely half the time to remove it to put everything back into place, making sure to level the bar out exactly where her mother had left it, and push her window back up to the tiny crack of freedom that it once provided.

Settling back down onto her bed, Taylor digested what she’d just done, what she could now _do_. Hindsight was a bitch and she knew that now that she’d looked for a way out she’d absolutely end up using the exit. When? She wasn’t sure, probably in the immediate future once the atmosphere of living with Hannah started to make homelessness look like a valid alternative. Probably a few days, at best, almost certainly before school started, and afterwards it would start to become a habit. She had a lot of those – habits, and none of them were good or healthy, but they _did_ stop her from disintegrating her mother’s inedible fucking lasagna while holding her cutlery.

‘Course it’d be considerably more difficult to hide her beating up people as a pastime now that Hannah was around, but again, she could cope. She was on the bottom floor, her window was easy enough to get in and out of, and as far as her mother was a smart woman she was also a very, very stupid one when it came to practical realities of life. She trusted Hannah about as far as she could throw her, but even that woman’s quiet, clipped rage was easier to deal with than her mother’s grandstanding.

Then again, getting caught was _arguably_ not the point of the adventure, not unless she needed even more bullshit in her day-to-day. Part of her, the very annoying part that handled her impulse control, imagined what it’d be like to watch the happiness drain out of her mother’s eyes while talking fondly with Hannah, broken by just three words: “I am Bayonet.”

...Shit. Did she have something wrong with her?

The guilt, tenuous and abstracted as it was, still came at the reminder of what she’d done. Sophia - Shadow Stalker - was healed, admittedly, but the shock she’d given her had nearly been lethal. There was an outstanding warrant for her arrest, fucking _Mouse Protector_ had made comments to the effect of “call me, I’ll have them in a week”, and there was even murmurings of the local PRT actually getting their requested Ward and full-blown hero transfers.

If PHO was to be believed - and it wasn’t - there was a high likelihood of Flechette - someone who fell out of favor in New York after clocking someone preaching about ‘The Gay Agenda’ on a college campus while in costume - Ursa Aurora - a hero also from New York, PHO was certain she summoned ghost bears - and Flourish - a hero from Boston who made spores inside of their flesh - would be transferred over ‘in the wake of the recent uptick in violence.’

Which didn’t bode well, as one of them could summon bears, another could shoot through what seemed like _everything_ , and the other was just kinda gross to look at. All of them here because of her, because _she_ fucked up and overreacted after Sophia nearly caved the back of her head in.

So, okay, sure. She still felt guilty - though it had waned too quickly, that might be something to think about later - and felt kinda put off by what she’d done. She felt upset that her team had ditched her, that Lisa had taken advantage of her in a moment of weakness and had still acted _kind_ to her, making it more difficult to get over the feelings she certainly wasn’t about to think about right now.

So where exactly did that leave her?

...Well, nowhere. She had no reason to care, but she did. She wanted to go out and do things, but was held back by the pretty basic knowledge that she’d be pulped by heroes and even some villains looking to make a good impression, not to mention that if she was caught going out her mother would rip into her regardless. She was in an unknown neighborhood, was expected to be studying to survive Arcadia while also needing to act so _normal_ when she just wanted to scream, and – and yet?

She knew she wouldn’t last a week before she was back out. Fucking selective self-awareness, telling her shit like this and not informing her about undue and unwanted crushes towards unavailable people.

Burying her face in her pillow that still smelled like her old home, Taylor tried not to scream her frustrations into it.

She failed.


	4. Breach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taylor sneaks out in hopes of proving something to herself. 
> 
> It doesn't go well.

She lasted a grand total of two days, one protracted argument, and her mother’s sincerity.

“Oh, so _now_ you get all fuckin’ concerned about your goddamn condom stunt,” Taylor muttered, bracing one leg against the concrete foundation of their home and _pulling_ , the dirt around the pike beginning to give. “Only after I point out that they were pointless because I'm not _into_ any guys at the moment. _‘Is this why you were lashing out? Because you were gay? Little owl, we’d love you either way, I mean, I’m bisexual!’_ Fucking eat shit, you crow.”

The ground heaved with a satisfying squelch, finally giving up her weapon. Wiggling it some and crouching down to the best of her ability, she finally pulled the entirety of it out, cursing her decision to listen to Lisa on what she should’ve used as a weapon. Before that she’d had a very nice and _very_ heavy bat, which hadn’t ever required her to bury it underground _or_ play tetris with her body to get it out from its hiding space. Maybe she’d pick up another bat after all of this, get something more her style.

Ducking beneath the lip of the patio, Taylor gave herself a moment to breathe in the humid, late August air, grimacing at the slight tug of pain in her right thigh. She’d been wrong about it being ‘easy’ to get out of her room, but it hadn’t exactly been difficult either, and she totally hadn’t landed ass-first on what was functionally packed dirt. Honest.

Glancing down towards her watch, she worried her lip. She’d wagered that two in the morning was about the best time she could sneak out, going by Hannah’s and her mother’s sleeping habits. What few maps she’d managed to search for on the internet hadn’t given her much context to where she now lived, but it didn’t really _matter_ either. Per the rule of Brockton Bay, no matter how nice they were, all roads led to a slum. Even if she didn’t find something to hit after another hour of walking, she’d cope. It wasn’t like she expected to get back into her home without having to answer questions.

Stepping out and onto the sidewalk, Taylor drew her hood further over her head and pulled her scarf up past her nose. She didn’t feel much when thinking about what was going to happen, but a sense of finality had finally started to settle in. This was going to be the last time she went out in this capacity, likely because immediately following it she’d be dumped into jail and then prison. That was okay, she’d cope, she’d do anything to get out of that house, to get away from her mom’s happiness and Hannah’s insufferable attempts at reaching out to her. Mom would heal, they would move on, and she’d… She’d finally be okay. She’d finally be in a place that she actually belonged.

Tucking her spear against her nape, she walked. Hannah’s house was snuggled away in a winding bunch of suburbs, but the road itself, despite twisting and winding helplessly around itself, eventually lead out and towards the main road, so she just kept on it. She could distantly see the downtown start to spill over into the southern docks – the place where she used to live. It was a sharp divide, where happy commercial buildings and apartments abruptly _gave_ , receding down into clusters of old, retrofitted military housing and gritty alleyways. It was palpable, and so was crossing between, the sudden weight gone from her shoulders as she could finally, finally _rationalize_ what she was about to do.

For the first time in what felt like _weeks_ , Taylor smiled. She’d never see the Undersiders again, not willingly, and she'd probably never see a decent school again in her future. She might not even see Hannah, and it was likely this would be the last nail for the relationship with her mother. She could accept that, the relationship had been on the ropes, probably for far longer than mom liked to think, always edging ever-closer to that ledge.

Mom had control issues in _spades_ , and it was reflected in how she changed after dad died. She needed her little power plays to reassert control, to prove that she was still ‘helping’, that she wasn’t falling apart. The condoms, the pamphlet, the few times she’d taken away everything bar study material and a bed, the other times she forced her to study for the entire summer, all of those had been power plays, mental hiccups as she tried, desperately, to assure herself that she was still _there_ and seemingly above her kid. Hannah had started to help, acting as a foil, a reminder that taking those steps wasn’t necessary, but she still relapsed a few times. Better, but not good enough – that had become the unfortunate mantra for her mom. She was a good person, but not a good parent.

Passing over from the main street and onto a smaller side road, Taylor carried herself a bit quicker, a bit more easily. The further away she got from that house, that _atmosphere_ , the better. Hannah would help mom, that would be fine, the end result would be good; they’d be better off without her.

She heard them before she saw them. Footsteps, tracing after hers, the murmur of voices and the shuttering of windows. She was in E88 territory, intentionally so; she knew the area better than she knew her new home. She was here to hurt someone, and who better than the folks who'd made her life at Winslow _even worse?_

Well, maybe a Merchant, but they were way too far away for that to be a reasonable goal, honestly.

Passing into an alleyway was probably the easiest way for them to appear without making this into a street-wide conflict, and appear they very much did. Almost the moment she slipped between a pawn shop and a skeevy dive bar she could hear their feet pattering closer, rushing at the chance to get to her.

The first person to pop out was an older man, someone probably in their mid to late thirties or forties, and as far as first impressions go it wasn’t great. He wore what could’ve honestly been the most cliche outfit imaginable: a wifebeater, some khakis, socks with sandals, a pistol he held incorrectly, and a ball cap worn backwards. What skin was left exposed - an unfortunate amount, as it turned out - was more or less littered with iconography, from the black sun to numerous 14s, several double Hs, and more than a few iron crosses. He had a smile full of white teeth, though, so maybe he had a decent day job when not out attacking minorities.

“What brings you ‘round?” The man spoke with a measured cadence, apparently undeterred by her continued approach. “I mean, not that we don’t appreciate what you did. We had a hunch that one of them was a fuckin’ chimp, but we expected you a while later, after the heat got off your back. Come to enlist?”

Taylor said nothing. _Steady, steady, right foot, left foot._ The fascist looked a bit more unnerved, his smile slipping a little.

“Oh come on now,” he _crowed_ , though the sound was more nervous than it was jubilant. “You can’t go tellin’ me you didn’t enjoy that? We know you’re white, pro’lly not a jew, neither, don’t got that hook for a nose.” Fifteen feet. “You enjoyed it, right? Makin’ a ni—”

Wifebeater let out a noise of anger as she closed the distance. His gun came up, but she was already quicker, already in range. She pushed out, let the pointed tip cut into the groove between his index finger and his thumb, and _pulsed_ , her power lashing out all-too-eagerly, desperate for release when she’d held it back for too long already. A crack of electricity spilled out from her spear an—

_—Sophia’s scream of pain was visceral and animalistic, almost broken. It sounded closer to a sob, Taylor acknowledged belatedly, the pulse in the back of her skull still so painful, so loud and wet. She hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t wan—_

Her breath was hot and rancid on her hand, clammy with gorge that she tried to swallow down. The wifebeater was on the ground – twitching but not dead. _She’d held back_ , she knew she did; she didn’t hurt anyone, she didn’t. She couldn’t have, she _fucking didn’t_ , she knew her limits and he knew his. He was crying loud, angry sobs, all wet and sticky, or was that her? She wasn’t sure, she _didn’t know, she didn’t fucking know Sophia would be hurt like that._

Another heave came out blessedly dry. Her face felt sweaty, something that probably wasn’t helped by the scarf.

Then the bat hit her, and pain swallowed up the panic. It was a cascade, somehow, her brain catching it all as though time had slowed; the crick of her ribs and then _crack_ , the spreading of fire-hot lines, spreading out and out and out, spilling up through her bones and carving lightning throughout. It felt like a shockwave passing through her, breaking things so deviously, snapping in the wrong ways and being just so much _agony_.

Taylor didn’t even recognize the sound of the person hitting her going down, having swung out instinctively, _needily_. She pulsed her power again, desperate for anything, and found her arm painfully jerked back the other way, the person she hit sent flying down the alleyway like a rock across water, skipping against the concrete with a loud series of screams. Her vision swam, again the screams sounded so similar, bringing her back to that moment all full of regrets and impatience, of wondering whether or not she should let herself be taken in for not just _what_ she did but _how she did it._

She hadn’t – hadn’t meant to hurt her. She wanted to hurt her, but not _hurt_ her. But where was the difference? She slumped against the alley wall, strained her ears, hoped to hear someone, anything, but only heard silence. Maybe someone might call it in, maybe they might scrape the gangbanger she’d just turned into a projectile off the tarmac, or maybe she’d be a murderer this time, instead of someone who just mutilated a Ward. It hurt to laugh, but the snickering, surprisingly wet, as though her throat was so very congested, gurgled up from her belly and escaped her lips. She sounded hysterical, and she probably _was_ , if she stopped to think about it.

The only time she didn’t listen to Lisa and it broke her. She’d done everything else, taken her advice for the stupid spear, taken her advice with the hair, taken her advice with the fucking outfit too. But the one time Lisa told her not to do something and she went _against_ her? This happened.

A shudder of nervous giggles came to Taylor. It hurt as bad as the last, but she didn’t try to stop them.

How much of her was broken? She didn’t know. She was pretty sure it was the adrenaline keeping her upright, but at the very least her legs hadn’t seemed to take any damage at all. She could walk, and walk she would. They’d need a place to find her, once her mother called it in, and if the PRT did scrape the gangbangers up off the concrete instead of Othala or whatever other poor white kid the E88 roped into being a healer? Well, they’d even have something to pin on her aside from Sophia. Mom would know, she bet, mom would know there was only one place she’d go for now.

Home.

She was going to go home.


	5. Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lamenting her choices, Taylor finds herself back at her former home. Things escalate from there.

Each breath came unsteady, rattled up through her chest. It hurt, but not in the way people expect the chest to hurt after walking a large distance. It wasn’t that choking burn, the almost airy _raw_ feeling she got when she'd started doing morning jogs. This pain was wet, clotting in her throat and weighing her focus down, choking her off more and more with each additional breath.

Taylor collapsed against the foot of her house, leaning her head back to rest against it. The lawn was empty, the driveway empty, she’d even checked the windows and found the inside, unsurprisingly, empty. The house had been completely moved, she even bet dad’s things were long gone; probably in some storage container so that her mother wouldn’t have to think about them anymore.

The world was so very quiet. Streetlights winked in and out, shuttering as a result of unrepaired lines and abuse. A pair of shoes, dangling from the laces, swayed absently in the wind high above her head, hung over a powerline.

She laughed, and the sound was so very pained. The taste of copper sat heavy on the back of her tongue, thick and suffocating. Her cough came unsteady into her hand, and when she pulled it away she found pale skin defined by pink-tinted fluid, flecked with dots of crimson. It was odd, the feeling that came as she stared at something that should worry her. All she could feel about it was _apathy_. It felt inconsequential, and by association, she supposed, _so did her life_. It was nice to put her feelings into words in that moment, but the relief was lost against an involuntary spasm, a stab of pain running through her ribs and into her spine.

“Fuck.” She didn’t know what her voice sounded like, the keening in her ears was back. “ _Fuck_ , fucking _fuck, fuck, fuck!_ ”

Taylor didn’t cry, she couldn’t. Even as she buried the heels of her palms against her eyes, feeling the hot warmth against them, _she wasn’t fucking crying_. She steadied her breath and tamped down on the panic that accompanied it. She’d chosen this herself, it was as much her fault as it was anyone else’s. It'd be best if she just – if she just, _stopped_ , if everything would just _shut the fuck up and let her disappear_. That was okay, right? _Right?_

Boots hit the ground, and she let her hands fall to see who it was. A crossbow bolt, obviously lethal, so sharp and _violent_ pointed straight between her eyes. A smile played at her lips, still hidden behind the thick scarf, as she glanced up towards Shadow Stalker’s mask, catching the emotion in Sophia’s eyes before she could look away.

Laughter came to her again, so abrupt and painful. She choked on it, tilting her head back hard against the siding of her house and _cackled_.

The arrow wavered. It was only for a moment, so quick that most wouldn’t catch it, but she did.

“What?” Sophia’s voice was a hiss, nasty and deadened by rage. “What the fuck is so _fu_ —”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Sophia.” Pulling at her scarf, she let it go lax, let it drop away from her face as she pulled at her hood. Her hair felt nice, exposed to the slight chill, banishing away the clammy sweat that she’d accumulated from wearing that godawful cotton hood.

“You know,” she let her voice fill in the silence. “You caused me to trigger, yeah? I mean, it was a long time coming, and I think it happened when I figured out how and _why_ you could do it.”

“Fucking _Hebert_ ,” the first words out of Sophia’s mouth and Taylor wasn’t surprised. She offered her a smile full of teeth and did nothing to hide the flicker of hot, needy hatred that swirled violently in her head.

“See,” Taylor continued, not letting the smile drop even as her face cramped. “I always wanted to know how you broke into my things, because I really did reinforce the locks after a point. My mom didn’t know, I don’t think she _needed_ to either, but I was buying top of the line padlocks and security shit, I even did research, but no dice. I wondered if you had put a hole somewhere in my locker, or had hidden a way in, but I couldn’t ever find it.”

Sophia’s hand tightened, the bolt pointed at her wavered enough that she was wondering if Sophia had noticed too.

“Then, when I was out? Merchants and ABB, fighting in the streets. Shadow Stalker, a 'hero', appears, and starts to ward them off with the help of Gallant. However, Gallant needs to go and make sure Squealer doesn’t fuckin’ crush half of the city’s police force into the ground, so he runs off, leaving you to protect us.” She wasn’t sure if it was recognition that dawned in Sophia’s face, but she didn’t much care either. “But then you turned to me, saw me, and _paused_. You took on that stance you do whenever you look at other girls. At first I thought you might be gay like me, because I mean you sure look at everything like a piece of meat, but... It isn’t that, is it? You’re _grading_ someone in your own head, whether or not they’re worthy of your attention and help, and when you saw me?”

The memory came to the fore.

— _A skeleton of shadowy mist coalesced at the front of the street, crossbow brandished and then fired. Squealer let out a sound of pain, and Shadow Stalker swivelled, pointing the bow towards something Taylor didn’t see, bursting into a flood of bleeding, dark mist. She tracked her with her eyes, found her goal - Oni Lee, staring absently at the goings-on while Armsmaster tries, desperately, to bat a rapidly growing Lung away - and watched as Shadow Stalker coalesced. She raised her bow up, fired once, and Oni Lee exploded into a font of ash._

_Then, she turned again. Taylor expected her to be looking back, to find another target, but instead she just stared. The hero’s posture changed, and she knew who it was in that moment. The stare was disinterested, one she knew so well; the posture was all straight spines and violent smiles. She could even imagine the look on Sophia’s face behind that mask, the way it split into a cruel sneer whenever she thought nobody was looking._

_She understood, in that moment, why nobody had helped, and why she couldn’t ever protect her own things. Part of her died, something important she imagined, something her mom might mourn the loss of. She felt the energy leave her, felt as she collapsed further back, unwilling or unable to remain on her feet. She wanted to go back to the moment where she didn’t know, when the world was simplistic and her dreams, now ruined and worthless, were comforting fantasies about her future, about a place she would rise to that Sophia couldn’t._

_Somewhere behind, Lung roared and charged. Armsmaster went to the side, slamming hard into the concrete and drawing Shadow Stalker’s - no, Sophia’s - focus back to the fight. Sophia could’ve done anything in that moment, yelled for her to move, but her eyes simply flicked away in disgust. Sophia rolled her shoulders, exploded into shadow, and went through the wall to her right, narrowly avoiding the charging half-dragon._

_Lung bore down on her, screaming in rage. She’d never be able to hurt him, she knew, he was Lung, he could regenerate from a leg stump and still kill you with it. He was immortal, perfect, completely and totally untouchable in every way and yet here he was, barely a foot away. Her heart rose into a roar, battering against her chest, her mind screamed at her to run as he got so close she could feel the heat radiating off of him. She felt everything slow, and then, finally, break; felt as the world swallowed itself down and into her, collapsing beneath its own weight._

_She saw his mask, abstracted as it was, both a dragon and something that could never be a dragon. She saw his hair and his skin, and then finally she saw his scales, only two, both impossibly vast and twirling through the air, falling like comets into a puddle muddied by green lichen_ —

“You just looked away, you left me to die. I bet you would’ve been happy, too, if I had. That was when I understood how you kept getting into my things, how you kept managing to get through my defenses, how you could suddenly get in front of me. I’d assumed running track had taught you to get around quicker, but I get it now.” Taylor steadied her breath, trying to banish away the constant roar of pain and anxiety from the misremembered, half-forgotten memory. “I triggered, and then I woke up. Everyone was collapsed on the ground, and I think I only got away with not being ID’d because I had already been on my back. I got up and ran off before anyone could ask questions.”

“So what?” Sophia’s words implied confidence but her voice said otherwise. “So _what?_ I’m not even on a normal patrol and nobody will fuckin’ know. You’re wanted, you nearly killed a _Ward_ —” she said the word in much the same way Taylor imagined she might say ‘Emma’ “—and nobody would put it past a ganger to kill you as a show of force, to show that they can take justice into their own hands.”

“You’d know that last bit, huh?” her voice was unsteady, the streetlight wasn’t just flickering anymore, it was fading in and out of focus. She tightened her grip around what remained of her consciousness.

“Fuck off, Hebert. You wouldn’t know _justice_ if it fucking killed you.” Sophia’s wavering finally slowed down, the crossbow levelling out.

Another burble of laughter came to her lips, this one so much more wet than the last. Taylor reached up to brush the wet copper from her lower lip. “I guess so.” She coughed into her open hand, if only to clear her voice up. “Glad I’m expecting you to kill me, then.”

Sophia snarled and then jerked forward, the press of hard metal cutting against her cheek as her head was lurched to the side. Her vision swam hard enough that she didn’t even notice that the crossbow had been used to hit her, only catching on once she saw the fleck of red on the crossbar. Her hand came up to touch her cheek and came back wet, she wiped the blood off on her shirt.

Her eyes never refocused this time, which was troubling. She tried to get them to, staring deftly at the flickering street light, but her gaze had started to slip, sliding off of objects and to the ground. Her chest felt heavier, stuffed with cotton and no longer in pain but no longer being really much of anything. If she had looked down and found it missing, her arms and legs suspended between a void, she wouldn’t have been surprised.

Fingers tied knots in her hair as her head was yanked back up. Sophia’s mask was close now, nearly pressing in against her. The metal was cool, almost soothing, against the ragged gouge on her cheek.

“The fuck’s wrong? That’s it?” Sophia jammed the tip of her crossbow into her chest. She couldn’t feel it. “What the _fuck_ Hebert? You put me under like that and, what, you go down with just one hit?”

Her gurgle of response got a surprisingly sharp flinch out of Sophia. By the time she’d regained enough of her head to look, Sophia had stepped back, looking nervously at her and at the street around them.

She wondered something, in that moment. She’d put someone in a position like this before, Madison, if she wasn’t mistaken. It’d been the first time she lashed out, Madison had done something stupid, like dump pencil shavings on her when they weren’t in a classroom. It’d taken her all of thirty seconds to break the other girl’s nose and nearly break her jaw, walking off before anything could be made of it. The principal had tried to pin it on her after, but when she pointed out she’d have bloody knuckles because of it - a lie, she mostly used her knees and elbows - and they had no evidence to support that, she’d been let off.

Madison never attacked her again, but she’d also never shown up at school again. Sophia got worse after that, though, and Emma became inconsequential. Insults stopped mattering, after that moment, because Sophia had found a way to hurt her worse. She never felt safe, never felt like her own _things_ were safe. Emma never stopped, of course, but she could only talk about how much her dad’s death was _her_ fault until she got accustomed to them. Sophia had been more important in the grand scheme of things, anyway, she saw how Emma was attached to her in ways that implied less _friends_ or _lovers_ and more _cult member_ and _cult leader_.

There was a twang of guilt somewhere in there. It wasn’t strong though, not anymore. She’d long ago gotten over the fact that it felt good - _still feels good_ \- to hurt others. That’d be with her for the rest of her life, and whether it was a learned trait or one she was born with, Taylor didn’t really _care_ anymore. It was hard to, when the world didn’t stay in one place anymore.

“So, _killer_.” It was less of a voice, more of a wheeze; it got Sophia’s attention anyway. “What’s it gonna take?”

Sophia paused again. Her movement stopped, her crossbow didn’t even waver. It was maybe the first time she’d seen Sophia or Shadow Stalker look contemplative, look _lost_ in any reasonable capacity. She was always either angry or violent or a mixture of the two.

Then, her phone came out and Taylor couldn’t breathe.

“Fuck you, Hebert.” Her words were simple, flat, empty of anything besides fatigue. “Just… Fuck you. Hi, get me a transport. I got Bayonet here, probably need an ambulance. Uhuh. Shadow Stalker. Yup. I know, I get it already, _fuck_. Piggy’s gonna be a pig, whatever.”

Then, silence again.

The wind shifted, quietly brushing across the sweet. The shoes above her rocked, the bushes crinkled, even the trees gave a little shudder, leaves clattering like just so many seashells.

“Fuck you.” Taylor found her voice again, and she held nothing back even while her chest screamed in protest. “Fuck you Sophia, _fuck you_. Fuck everything you are and everything you _fucking will be_. Why can’t you just _fucking go away?_ ”

An arrow thump’d itself into the ground beside her. She couldn’t even bring herself to react, though she spared it a glance and found it buried up to its fletching in the earth.

“You’re a weak piece of shit, Hebert.” Again, _that voice_. Assured, smug, uncaring; objectively _correct_ , even if only in her own head. “A fucking loser. You can barely do shit, you can’t protect your shit, you will live your life _as_ a piece of shit and the closest thing you will find to fulfilling will be _wallowing_ in your own shit. All the shit I do to you? It’s because you can’t do anything back. You never ran away from Lung, or even _tried_ to, you never fought back at the start of the year, you let me walk all over you, like a _fucking bitch_. All that shit I stole? I destroyed it after, because it was all to make you _fucking learn your place_.”

A boot stomped down on her hand, which had been inching towards the arrow. Taylor swallowed a scream of pain as she felt her middle finger bend in a way it shouldn’t. Sophia plucked the arrow from the ground, loaded it back into her crossbow, and then stepped back away.

Taylor flicked her heel in, drawing the pike in an—

A burst of stars swallowed up her vision and her head slammed back against the house’s siding again. She felt the warm trickle of crimson down her face, felt the way she could _feel_ her nose, its weight and the crooked angle it now sat. She jammed her eyes shut to stop the swell of nausea that bubbled up before bringing her hand up to wipe the blood away before it could pool in her mouth. What she could see of Sophia was her wiggling one hand in protest, apparently her face had enough sharp edges to fuck her fist up a bit.

Sophia leaned down and slipped the pike into her hand. She inspected it, and rage found Taylor again, the quiet little thing that told her to take hold of a stick and kill Sophia with it. But there were no sticks, there was no pike. The ground was damp, and she could already hear the bleat of alarms as the far end of the road lit up in red, blue and white.

A figure wearing a bandanna - _Miss Militia?_ \- stepped out from the side of one house and started walking over.

Sophia discarded the pike, left it to sit on the sidewalk, and turned back one last time. “I hope you enjoy prison, Hebert.” Her voice was all smiles. “Hopefully there you’ll be someone else’s bitch. Try to be something _more_ than the shit on someone’s heel, alright?”

The ambulance pulled in, followed by two BBPD cars. Miss Militia flagged Sophia down, not even bothering to _look_ at her, and instead motioned the police and paramedics forward. As a man screamed into her face about her rights - and soon to be lack thereof - while a man in white tried nervously to check her for any major wounds, only to flinch back once he felt her rib cage, she could only wonder about what her mother might think when she found out.


End file.
